Review: Upside Down Soars Visually, But Lacks Gravity

Class warfare never looked as beautiful as it does in Upside Down, which opens in theaters today. Taking place on “twinned worlds” where gravity pulls in opposite directions, the movie’s unique setting lends itself to an audacious visual take on the timeless theme of the “haves versus the have-nots.”

If only the story were as original, or as strong, as the film’s topsy-turvy look. Unfortunately, Upside Down — which casts itself as a tale of forbidden love in the mold of Romeo and Juliet — invests almost all of its cinematic capital in gravity-defying eye candy. As a result, the movie’s wafer-thin romance is harder to believe than the mind-spinning possibilities of its inverse worlds.

Perhaps pitching Upside Down as a sci-fi film is part of the problem: While undeniably imaginative in concept, the execution lacks the emotional heft needed to lift it beyond the fantasy visuals and fairy tale storyline. The PG-13 movie, which opens Friday, does prove thought-provoking, but not really in a good way. It’s possible that switching off your internal nitpicker — so as to avoid pondering the dizzying physics or plight of the downtrodden in the face of the robber barons in the sky — might make for a more enjoyable ride.

Written and directed by Juan Diego Solanas, Upside Down stumbles from the start, explaining the funky physics of the rich world (known as “Up Top”) and the poor (“Down Below”) in an overly enthusiastic voiceover reminiscent of a theme park stage show. Scruffy down-worlder Adam (played by Cloud Atlas’Jim Sturgess) explains how the gravitational ecosystem works, reveals the predatory nature of requisite evil corporation TransWorld and introduces the love of his life, a pretty girl from Up Top named Eden (Kirsten Dunst, Spider-Man, Melancholia).

Traveling between worlds is forbidden, so naturally their youthful affair — conducted in a mountainous region where the two planets come seductively close together — is illegal. Cross-world smooching is a serious crime, and soon the ridiculously severe border patrol is breaking up the lovers’ assignation. There’s an accident as they try to escape where Eden falls upward into the sky; Adam presumes she’s dead.

But this is a fairy tale, so love cannot die, not even from an interplanetary head injury.

A decade later, Adam toils away in this dystopian world, creating a cream capable of providing the ultimate face-lift with the help of a family secret. After spotting Eden, now a TransWorld employee, on television, he begins scheming to get a job in the company’s skyscraper, a building so massive it bridges the two worlds.

What follows has its entertaining moments. As mentioned, the sweeping views of the dual worlds are beautiful , if occasionally vertiginous, since half the screen is upside down a good portion of the time. Supporting actor Timothy Spall (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) delivers some delightfully droll moments playing a mischievous TransWorld worker willing to help out a guy from the other side. And Adam’s travails as he attempts to win Eden’s love one again — her accident leaves her with a horrible case of amnesia — are broadly comic.

Still, as the annoyingly earnest voiceover points out at the movie’s beginning, this is a love story. While Dunst retains her title as Hollywood’s pre-eminent practitioner of the inverted liplock, she and Sturgess aren’t given much to work with when it comes to the script. The actors come off as likable enough, but there’s precious little character being developed, either on the beautifully grimy underworld or the gleaming world up above. As a result, it’s hard to see why they care about each other, or why we should care about their rekindling romance. As interplanetary interloper Adam courts Eden in her posh world, there’s more lens flare than legitimate emotional heat.

It’s an odd and ultimately flawed mix: A bold visual experiment tied to a simplistic story that’s about as complicated as “happily ever after.”

Current trends aside, not every movie needs to be “dark.” But if it’s hard-core science fiction you’ve got your heart and mind set on, you’ll be disappointed by Upside Down. Despite its dystopian setting and garden-variety class struggle themes, this lighter-than-air romance remains mostly fantasy and froth. You can bliss out on the dazzling visuals, but don’t spend too much time concentrating on the details.

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